THE SORROW OF THE PAPER BOAT

Who would believe the sravana rains,  
and why ? It would arrive suddenly  
like an untimely guest,  
in your garden someday, at your courtyard,  
using your blind moments.  
And yet again, pushing open your windows,  
it would enter your room,  
wetting your books, your bed,  
manuscripts of verse and memory,  
and of course, you.  

It would bring back  
the fading memories of the world;  
it would make you remember things  
that you might have forgotten,  
plundering away your sense of peace  
and then you, lonely and poor,  
would be thinking once more  
about the lost splendours of the yesterdays.  

Sravana would give you once more  
the agony of injured manhood,  
of loss and defeat.  
It would gather together  
at the end of your pen the griefs  
you may have already forgotten;  
the last shreds of a story of grief  
that is still incomplete.  

It would remind you  
of your dear one's vain efforts  
to hold in her pallava  
the music of the sravana rains;  
and when you attempt to draw  
the picture of phalguna around her,  
your brush would find only the thorny cactus.  

The rains of the early ashadha—  
the season of Ramagiri-loneliness.  
Sravana is the time of murdered love,  
of wounds and loss,  
the season that leaves you  
empty and blood-besmeared.  

And the voice of sravana—  
a choric sigh of accumulated grief  
that plays among the Ramagiris.  

Sravana would arrive  
and with the pride of a conqueror,disappear,  
like a cruel, heartless lover  
offering you only the gift of grief.  
And after its exit,  
you would be floating  
on the restless surface of its tormenting sea  
like a paper boat, miserable.  
  

Translation :
Bibhu Padhi